On Friday, April 21st, Waring's Sustainability Elective orchestrated a day of special Earth Day-related activities. For the third year in a row, to mark the occasion of Earth Day, there were no regular classes held. Instead, Rowan Mulder '23, Sarah Patey '24, and other members of Waring's student-led Sustainability Elective created an entire day of programming centered around climate awareness. Students signed up for activity periods focused on gardening, identifying nature, letter-writing for sustainable causes, planting trees around campus, off-campus beach cleanups, and much more.

The students also arranged presentations from two all-school speakers - Pete Christopher and Jon Grabowski (P '26). 

Pete Christopher speaks at Earth Day Special Day

Pete Christopher works with NOAA fisheries writing regulations with the goal of balancing the sustainability of our marine life with the well being of the fishermen. He gave a very informative presentation on this topic and answered many questions. Thank you Pete. 

Jon Grabowski is a current Waring parent and principal investigator at the Northeastern University Marine Science Center, studying the relationship between fisheries management and restoration ecology. He gave a wonderful presentation on his work in the field of marine science – thank you Jon for your contribution to the Waring community!

The day concluded with a grounding mindfulness exercise on the Mine Field; fortunately, the weather cooperated and brought us all some much-needed sunshine.

The celebration was Waring at its best, with students taking the lead and guiding each other through important talks and activities. The students organized the day from start to finish, creating a memorable and educational experience that their peers will not soon forget.

February is Black History Month! Group 3 (10th Grade) Art students read and discussed Race and Representation by bell hooks and watched the documentary Black Art in the Absence of Light, a contemporary survey of Black achievements in American art. Students selected an artist to research, and spent two weeks getting to know their visual syntax as well as the context around their work, how and if they address race, representation, and visibility in American society. Students wrote a notecard, created several studies of their artist's work, and gave short presentations in class.  

Please stop by the Forum to view this excellent student exhibition or view the work online on the Waring Smugmug Page.

Waring debaters, judges, and parents had a fabulous experience at the Harvard High School Tournament,  held in Cambridge on February 18-20. This tournament, the largest in the nation, had over 2000 debaters and judges in attendance. Waring had success in all levels of the tournament.

Micah '26 had a record of 6 wins and only 1 loss, debating with a colleague from Concord Carlisle HS. They won the trophy for elimination rounds, tying for 17th in a field of 175 teams. Robbie '29, debating alone in the middle school division, earned a trophy for 17th in a field of 168 teams. Also competing with distinction were Gigi '27 & Leo '28, Michael '26 & Ava '26, and Wilhelmina '26 & Ana '26.

Judging for Waring were our advanced debaters: Cam '23, Alex '24, Mikaila '24, and Eliza '24.

We were assisted by our parents who drove to and from Cambridge each day, and Coach Tim Averill ran the tabulation room all weekend.

The team will return to competition at the Mardi Gras Tournament at Shrewsbury HS on March 4.

Lykos Robotics, one of Waring's three First Lego League teams, is featured in an article on the NASA website! For their Innovation Project (which won first place at the FLL State Tournament at WPI) Lykos team members studied the idea of putting a solar farm on the moon, and contacted NASA scientists for help. The NASA engineers were very responsive, and the students emailed back and forth with them and talked with them by phone several times as they did their research and prepared for competition. A couple of weeks ago, a public affairs writer from NASA reached out and asked to interview the students about the experience. The article just came out yesterday. The students are really excited- feel free to ask them about it! Click the NASA logo below to read the article on the NASA website. 

For the third consecutive week, the Waring Debate Society had success, this time at the Keith West Memorial Tournament, held at Boston Latin School on Saturday, January 21. Four of our teams qualified for the Massachusetts State Tournament this spring: Eliza '24 & Mikaila '24, Gigi '27 & Micah '26, Wilhelmina '26 & Ana '26, and Thomas '27 & Leo '28. 

Also debating with distinction were our middle school teams: Robbie '29 & Maddie '29 and Cira '28 & Spike '27. Most of the competition was high school students, and I was proud of the efforts of our younger and less experienced debaters.

Waring was supported by our judges: Parents Jamie, Terry, and Alex. I worked in the tabulation room for the day. I was very excited that the tournament offered a prize for the judge who wrote the most outstanding ballots (as judged by the Boston Latin students) and this award, The Keith West Adjudication Award, went to my grandson Wilbur from Concord Carlisle High School.

Our teams of Eliza & Mikaila and Micah & Cam travel to Atlanta GA next weekend to compete in the Barkley Forum for High Schools at Emory University.

"In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.” Source: www.kingcenter.org

On Friday, Jan 13, the Waring community gathered for an extended ASM time to honor the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. We reflected on several passages of King’s where he discusses Beloved Community and then we listened to a portion of Bernice King’s talk on the King Center’s 2023 MLK Day Theme: It Starts With Me: Building A Beloved Community Mindset to Transform Unjust Systems. In her talk, Bernice outlines some aspects of cultivating a beloved community mindset, which, when practiced alongside courageous direct action toward transforming unjust systems, is a powerful tool of love and social change. Below are the tenets of beloved community mindset that she highlights:

• Understanding that we are interconnected and interdependent
• The ability to disagree without demeaning each other
• Employing peaceful means in our quest for peaceful ends
• Mental and spiritual conditioning to correct injustice and inequity without canceling, wishing destruction upon or seeking to destroy the person who propagated the injustice or inequity
• Evolving from mere pity and apathy to compassionate action
• Collaborating without compromising on justice
• Embracing the philosophy and methodology of nonviolence as the pathway to the Beloved Community

After our all school discussion and collective visioning of what it means- looks like, feels like- to cultivate beloved community, we broke out into tutorial groups and reflected on the following questions, which students then inscribed on panels of a community art project designed by Marika Whitaker. Tutorials also worked on several different local service projects, creating dog toys for the Northeast Animal Shelter, decorating bags for Ellis Square Friends, and assembling snack bags for Beverly Bootstraps’ After School Programs. 

We invite you to come by the ASM space to see the completed mural and to join us in reflecting on beloved community: holding and building King's vision and practice for a loving and just world. For more information and resources, please visit the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change. (https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/)

• Take a minute to allow yourself to dream and envision Beloved Community. What is the shape of the word beloved ? what is the shape of the word community ?When you imagine being in the midst of beloved community what does it feel like, look like, sound like to you?
• What conditions are necessary for cultivating a beloved community? What do we need more of, what habits do we need to release in order to build beloved community? 
• How does cancel culture and wokeness relate align or contradict with the idea of beloved community? 
• How is the idea of beloved community co-opted by white people who want to skip over the work of reconciliation?
• What is one commitment you can make individually toward cultivating a mindset of beloved community?
• What is one commitment (or one word) that your tutorial can make in order to cultivate a beloved community mindset here at Waring?

Congratulations to Waring's own Rebecca Reed, who is one of this year's winners of Airtable's Interface Designer Contest for the digital "Teaching Tool" she designed for curriculum planning and student information. Read more here - and brava, Rebecca!

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just four years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made over 20 grants. Read below about this year’s grant recipients.

Music has found beautiful new ways to flourish at Waring School even while we're apart. More than 100 Waring students, families, alumni, and faculty collaborated to record a moving virtual performance of Bill Withers' "Lean on Me."

Waring's three 3D printers are rarely silent while students are on campus and have continued to buzz even in their absence.

Francis Schaeffer, Waring's STEM Coordinator and FLL Coach of the Brickwolves, has kept the 3D printers in Waring's makerspace busy the past few weeks making face masks. Each mask takes about nine hours to print and another 40 minutes to assemble using instructions supplied by Waring alumnus Bennett Ahearn '03.

Since Waring School implemented a remote learning plan, students in Michelle Ramadan’s Humanities Class have met regularly on Zoom to continue their discussion of World War I.

To conclude the unit, the ninth and tenth graders have been working on a poetry and art response to the poignant novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Yesterday, April 16, they were joined in class by four accomplished poets.

Over the past year, Waring School has been in the process of designing a new school building on its 32-acre campus. To do this they will be tearing down the old building that used to be the school’s main gathering space, for both students and teachers. The Grande Salle will be demolished which is a loss for the students, but Mrs. Cahill's office will also be taken down. The loss of Mrs. Cahill’s office will be the loss of a common place for the faculty. If you walk by her office at any given moment during the week it is not uncommon to see anywhere from one to ten teachers bustling around the tiny space.

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just three years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made possible 18 grants. Read below about this year’s grant recipients and about the enriching trips, workshops, and lessons they have planned with their grants.

John Ferrick retired in 2003 after teaching in Ipswich Public Schools for 33 years. He knew almost immediately it was a mistake.

 “I had already kinda decided I wished I had not retired,” said John. That summer he was working at the Crane Estate, planning programs for others to teach, but he wished he was the one teaching them instead. In short, just a few weeks into retirement, he already wanted to be back in the classroom. That fall, he came to teach at Waring and has stayed ever since. In total, he’s accumulated more than 50 years of teaching experience.

This fall, Waring Theatre put on a wonderful show called Shakespeare’s Sister. It was the 16th production by the Waring Theatre Department since Elizabeth Gutterman’s arrival at Waring School five years ago.

Elizabeth’s love for theatre began at a young age. Her family had season tickets to a theatre in Providence, and her earliest memories of theatre begin there—with plays like Red Noses and School for Scandal. This started an everlasting appreciation for theatre.

Tiffany Soucy hurries from the booth to a stage window that floats slightly askew. As she runs down the center aisle, she grabs a student to steady the windowpane so she can adjust it. “Does that look right?” she says. “I’m not the best at seeing if it’s level. Hey, Mattie, is this level?”

It was build-day in theater, and tech week was only six days away and the performance two weeks out. A lot had to be done to get Shakespeare's Sister running smoothly. As the Technical Director of the show, it’s her job to oversee the set, props, costumes, and everything in the booth. She is one of the most important people in the theater. She keeps the show running.

Waring is excited to introduce three new members to the school’s faculty and staff for the start of the 2019-2020 academic year. Learn a little about each addition below.

Last December, students in the Waring Inclusion and Diversity Alliance met to give input on Waring’s Diversity Statement. An updated statement would reaffirm Waring’s commitment to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.

Several students wrote their thoughts down on notecards.

Created entirely by Waring’s parent community to show their deepest gratitude for Waring’s teachers and staff, the Faculty Grant Program provides funding for Waring employees to pursue enriching experiences beyond the walls of campus. The Faculty Grant Program affords faculty and staff the opportunity to think outside the box, pursuing passions for subjects that they might not otherwise be able to access. In return, they will then bring that experiential knowledge back into the classroom to inform and enrich their students’ learning. In just two years, generous donors to the Faculty Grant Program have already made possible 11 grants. Read below about the amazing projects this year’s recipients will undertake with their grants.

Waring School is excited to introduce eight new faculty members for the start of the 2018-19 academic year. Learn a little about each addition below.